It is often desirable or necessary to have a door that can swing about one of two axes. In many applications these two axes will be parallel and vertical. This is true of fixed doorways, but the desirability or need may be especially acute in the case of appliances or other devices that are likely to be relocated. For example, it may be impractical or impossible to locate a refrigerator in a spot otherwise convenient due only to the fact that the refrigerator door opens from a particular side.
Several approaches have been taken to meet this need. It is now common for refrigerators to be convertible from right hand to left hand opening appliances the conversion typically requiring removal of the door and relocation of the hinges and magnetic latch. However, this solution is not responsive to the situation where it is only occasionally necessary to open the door from the side that is not the one from which it normally opens.
Various approaches have been tried to provide a door that can be opened from either side at the whim of the user. An old pencil-box design used four flexible ribbons, two parallel and two crossing one another, across the top to allow opening from either side. U.S. Pat. No. 3,889,419 provides hinge pins along both axes, and a system of sliding bolts to engage one or the other sets of hinge pins. U.S. Pat. No. 3,733,749 provides door mounted rotary bearings with arcuate slots that co-act with arcuate projections on the frame.
Aside from the pencil-box, these prior art devices tend to be restricted to refrigerator use due to their complexity or need for close tolerances. The pencil-box approach was only suitable for extremely light weight and small applications.